Dunbar was the fourth-highest contestant on the show, out of
a field of 16 artists who had appeared at the beginning of the season.
Contestants were eliminated on a weekly basis.

But Dunbar's supporters can still help him appear on TV next
year with online votes.

At the end of the episode, show host/judge Dave Navarro, of
the band Jane's Addiction, told viewers that they can vote back the two
strongest contestants from the show. Those two contestants will compete on the
live finale, which airs on Tuesday, Oct. 8, for a spot to compete in "Ink
Master" again next year.

"If I were lucky enough to receive America's vote on that, I
couldn't wait to come back and show you guys what I've been schooling myself
on," Dunbar said.

On Tuesday's episode, the top four contestants were tasked
with two tattoo challenges.

First, they had to apply a tattoo that was designed by one
of the guest judges from earlier in the season, all targeted at exploiting the
artist's specific weakness. They would each apply their tattoo at the same
time, on the same person, on a different limb.

Dunbar was given a design of a dagger piercing through a
rose.

Judges said that Dunbar showed strong technical ability
through the show, but that he needed to craft a "bold, simple, solid tattoo."
Oliver Peck said that Dunbar was overthinking throughout the competition, and
needed to make one strong offering for the first challenge.

Judges all agreed that he delivered.

"I wanted to see him do something simple, but be something
solid," Peck said. "I think he killed it."

For the second tattoo, the artists got a chance they haven't
gotten all season: to tattoo any design they wanted, that didn't have to tie in
with a certain challenge. Dunbar designed a macabre depiction of a woman with "day
of the dead" makeup "taking a life of its own," he described, floating up,
while the woman held a skull in her hand.

Dunbar said that he made such an elaborate design because he
felt he needed to make a strong impression on the judges, which he hadn't made throughout
the competition. Judges thought that the tattoo was too difficult to figure out.

"Your comfort zone is in a fantastical, melting, trippy art
style," said judge Chris Nunez. That's fine and good, but today, you needed to do
something clear.

After the judges' initial critiques, the contestants knew the
final spot would come between Dunbar and Katherine "Tatu Baby" Flores, a return
contestant from last year. They discussed who deserved the final spot during
down time in the house before returning to the tattoo shop to hear the
decision.

The other final two artists, Jime Litwalk and Joey "Hollywood"
Hamilton, both thought Dunbar should have went to the finale because they felt
he was more consistent than Flores, who had higher high points but a lot of low
points as well.

"I'd pick someone who's been a B average in the competition,
instead of just As and Fs," Litwalk said.

Near the end of the episode, judges determined that Dunbar would
be eliminated.

Peck said that Dunbar's risk-taking was "inspiring," but
that his approach "went a little overboard."

"...In this competition, had different decisions been made,
you could have taken that spot," Peck said.

"There's definitely some shame involved with going home now,"
Dunbar said. "I know I can beat Tatu Baby, I can beat Joey, and I can beat Jime.
I took a big risk, and it did bite me in the (butt)."

Each episode of "Ink Master" tasks contestants with showing
their abilities in a specific skill—volume, precision, and other categories.

Contestants began each show with a flash challenge, where
they would compete against each other for the privilege of selecting their
human canvasses from the elimination challenges. In the elimination challenge,
each contestant would be paired with a person to create a tattoo for, and to
apply it in a certain amount of time.

At the end of each episode, judges would call four of the
contestants to their judging table. They would crown one of them as having the
best tattoo of the day, and critique the three others as the day's worst
tattoos.

Dunbar consistently avoided the last call to the judging
table, but that was both a pro and a con: he always performed well enough to
avoid being eliminated, but judges never picked his tattoo as the day's best,
which hurt his chances at making as strong of a stamp in the competition as he
could.

He has also gotten a lot more work since the show began, and
has spent the last couple months traveling around the country to tattoo at
different shops. In a recent Flint Journal interview, he said he has been
getting booked about two months in advance based on his work from the show.